


Requiem

by osprey_archer



Series: Requiem [1]
Category: Les Misérables (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-07
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-12-07 17:46:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/751278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Eponine trudged through the streets of Paris, the stinging scent of gunpowder still in her nose and blood still streaking her shirt, to tell Cosette that Marius was dead.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Requiem

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Emily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emily/gifts).



Eponine had always resented Cosette. She envied Cosette even as her mother told her to despise her – envied her because her mother told Eponine to despise her, as she never told Eponine to despise their other drudges. There was no need to be told, with the others; they were not pretty, not sweet, not charming, and would never outshine Eponine, as her mother feared Cosette might.

As Eponine knew, even then, dressed in velvet as Cosette wore rags, that Cosette did.

And then, Eponine resented Cosette because Cosette got to leave the Thenardiers, although it was a long time yet before Eponine realized how much she wanted to leave her parents.

And when Marius fell in love with Cosette, well, Eponine resented her for that. Pretty bourgeois Cosette, with that soft white skin and those delicate clothes that said she’d never worked a day in her life!

Except of course Cosette had worked like a drudge for the Thenardiers. They would have worked her like a drudge forever if they could: and thinking of it, Eponine’s resentment curdled into guilt.

And so, guilty, Eponine trudged through the streets of Paris, the stinging scent of gunpowder still in her nose and blood still streaking her shirt, to tell Cosette that Marius was dead.

Guilt: because Marius’s death, too, was Eponine’s fault. She should have been on the barricade to turn the gun away from him. 

Guilt: because only then, when Marius bled out beneath the barricade, had Eponine showed him Cosette’s hidden letter. He lifted his hand from his wound to touch the paper, as gentle as if he brushed a curl of Cosette’s golden hair out of her fine, pale face, and smudged the page with blood.

Guilt: but now Eponine would expiate her sins. She knew where Cosette lived, and she knew no one else would think to tell Cosette of Marius’s death; so Eponine would go and tell Cosette that Marius had died with Cosette’s name on his lips.

And then? And then what would she do?

Marius was dead, and her little brother Gavroche, and all the students: everyone. 

She could not think what she would do, after she told Cosette. It was hard enough to lift her blood- and mud-clogged boots to keep on walking. Such heavy shoes men wore!

But here: Cosette’s door. Eponine had trouble lifting her hand to knock.

The door opened. Pretty Cosette, in a clean white dress sprigged with blue flowers. Her pink lips parted, her blue eyes widened in surprise at blood-spattered Eponine. “Oh –“

“Marius – ” started Eponine. “Marius – Cosette, I am so sorry, Marius – ” And tears choked off her throat.

Cosette half-collapsed against the doorframe, blood draining till her face paled plaster-white. _Weak_ , thought Eponine, not sure if she aimed her contempt at herself or Cosette; but it must have been herself, because Cosette steadied herself, hands tight on the doorframe, while Eponine could only weep.

Cosette said, voice high and shaky but clear, “What happened to Marius, please?”

Eponine tried to answer, but she couldn’t force sound through her throat. Cosette, heedless of the dirt, caught Eponine’s filthy hands in her own. “Please, tell me! Is he – he isn’t – ”

“They’re all dead,” Eponine cried. “All of them, all of them, Marius and Enjolras, – damn him! Damn him, damn his plans!– and, and, and my brother Gavroche, and – ”

And Eponine’s legs gave out beneath her, and she crumpled on the front step.

Warmth.

Cosette was holding her; Cosette had knelt with her on the dirty steps; had wrapped her arms around Eponine, never mind her blood-spattered shirt. Eponine tried to push Cosette’s arm away. But her hands were weak from days without rest or sleep, and even delicate Cosette was too strong for her.

But then, Cosette had always been strong.

“I’ll get you dirty,” Eponine said.

“I don’t care,” said Cosette. Her breath was warm against Eponine’s scalp – her face pressed against Eponine’s filthy hair.

But Eponine cared. It was not right, that she should get Cosette dirty, that the Thenardiers should drag Cosette in the filth again; and it was wrong, all wrong, that Cosette should comfort Eponine. Eponine pulled away. She grabbed the wrought iron rail to drag herself to her feet, but her knees were as water, and gave way beneath her, so she fell on the stair again, looking up at Cosette.

Old blood from Eponine’s clothes smudged Cosette’s blue and white dress. Red and blue and white: the tricolor. A bitter, sobbing laugh burst out of Eponine, so raucous and sad that Cosette raised her head. Perfect Cosette, face blotchy and red. A thread of snot hung from her nose.

“I should go,” said Eponine.

“No,” said Cosette. She wiped at her face, and only smeared the blood and tears and snot. And she was still pretty, so pretty, so _unfair_ , and so kind, and she said, voice husky with tears “Please, come inside. Whoever you are – ”

“Don’t you know who I am?” Eponine cried. “I used to kick over pails of water to make you wash the floors again! Don’t you remember me?”

Cosette sat back, inspecting Eponine’s face. Eponine disentangled herself from Cosette’s arms, half-falling down a step. “Eponine?” Cosette said, disbelieving.

Eponine tried to stand again. She had to cling to the wrought iron rail to hold herself up. “I should go.”

“No, stay,” Cosette urged. She caught at Eponine’s sleeve. “That was so long ago. I’m a different person now. And you’re a different person. And we…”

“Different!” cried Eponine. How could she, how _dare_ she be kind to Eponine? Even in grief, must Cosette be kind? “Different! You are, but I’m not. I’m just the same: still selfish, and foolish, and still my parents’ daughter – and _you_ aren’t different, really. You’ve always been better than me! Of course he – ”

But Eponine’s legs crumpled beneath her, and saved her from her traitor tongue, and she fell at Cosette’s feet. Pretty blue slippers, embroidered in forget-me-nots.

“Eponine…”

A thousand things she wanted to say – _I should have died instead of him_ and _I wish it had been me_ and, finally, stupidly, _why?_ But Eponine said none of them; instead, she took Cosette’s blood-stained letter to Marius from the breast of her shirt and shoved it at Cosette. “I stole it,” she said. “I showed it to him only as he died. So let me go.”

Cosette held the letter in her hands. She stroked it, as Marius had stroked it, as if they could reach across time to touch each other’s face.

And then Cosette touched Eponine, her soft hands light on Eponine’s scratched fists. “You must stay with us,”said Cosette, tears sparkling in her eyes. “Please. And when you are well, you can tell – tell me how Marius died.”

At last she asked for something for herself. Perfect Cosette – and Eponine’s resentment fell away in sorrow. Only Cosette ever had him: but they had lost Marius together. “He died with your name on his lips,” said Eponine; and she let Cosette help her to her feet, and leaned on her as they went inside.

***

Eponine stayed in bed for a week, perhaps. She could not tell: time passed, night came and went, and the sun crept across the ceiling; but she could not feel time’s passing. She slept, but it was not sleeping: she dozed, but when she slipped deeper, they waited for her: the students, Gavroche - _Gavroche, Gavroche_ , her little brother, dead and gone.

And Marius, of course. But she never saw his face.

She tasted the gunpowder smoke in the back of her throat. 

The man Cosette called Papa brought them tea and soup and bread. It was very hard to eat. Eponine tried to eat hers, soaking the bread to mush in the soup so she did not have to chew. Cosette, sitting next to the window, tore her bread to crumbs and tossed it to the sparrows. 

There were splinters in Eponine’s hands from the barricades. She ached as if she had fallen from a great height. And she slept, and slept, yet could not sleep: she woke gasping in the darkness. 

Once, after she woke crying, someone bathed her face in lavender water. (Lavender water, so bourgeois.)

It was Cosette. Her hands were very soft. Eponine mumbled, “What are you doing?”

“Go back to sleep,” Cosette said. Her voice was soft and husky, and it came to Eponine as she drifted back to sleep that Cosette had been crying too. 

And yet somehow, it passed. One morning, Eponine awoke, and the sun streaming through the window seemed to burn off the gray fog that had hung between her in the world. The light was so clear and pure that it hurt. Eponine raised her hands to shield her eyes, and in doing so knocked the blanket away. The air, still cool with morning, was a shock against her skin.

Her grief had not gone. But it was no longer everywhere, and she felt that she could breathe again. She sat up, letting the blanket fall, and marveled how good the air felt on her hot skin. She looked around the room. It seemed as if she had never seen it before, though she had half-slept there for a week.

Cosette sat at the window, knees drawn up to her chest, her face pale in the sunlight. It came to Eponine that Cosette always sat by that window; that Cosette fetched her dresses from the armoire in the corner of the room; and that the room therefore must be Cosette’s.

“Am I in your bed?” she asked Cosette.

Her rusty voice surprised her, and she realized suddenly that her throat hurt, and she was thirsty. But Cosette did not seem surprised. She turned away from the window, slowly, like a wind-up toy winding down. “It doesn’t matter.”

Eponine was annoyed. “Doesn’t matter that you have nowhere to sleep? You are not, you cannot be so saintly as all that,” she said. She kicked the sheets off her legs. Her long bare legs stretched before her, barricades bruises yellow and ugly. “Of course it matters that I’ve taken your bed for a week. Where are you sleeping?”

“I can’t sleep,” said Cosette. Her voice rose a little, so she sounded like a sad little girl: echoes of little Cosette. _She_ could not sleep: she who had not been on the barricade, who had not held Marius as he died, who barely _knew_ Marius, and still, still he had loved her best.

“Of course you can’t,” said Eponine. “Because you have nowhere to lie down.”

“Because of grief!” cried Cosette. She half-turned to the window, lifting a hand to her face, and Eponine hated herself.

“Well, I think lying down will help,” Eponine said. She tried to sound gentle, but it was hard with the rasp in her throat. There was a cup of water on the table by the bed: she sipped, and felt better. It made her feel worse for her unkindness. “I can’t,” she said, and cleared her throat, and looked down into the cup. “I can’t sleep either.”

She expected Cosette to laugh at her, because what else had Eponine done all week but sleep? But Cosette didn’t laugh. Eponine raised her head to look at her, and found that Cosette’s mouth trembled. “I’m so tired,” Cosette admitted.

Eponine slipped out of bed. The nightgown – it must have been Cosette’s – drifted around her, brushing against her legs as she walked over to Cosette and knelt by Cosette’s chair. She drew Cosette’s hands from her face, holding them in her own. Cosette’s hands were cold.

“It’s all right,” Eponine said. “It’s all right, Cosette, please go to bed.”

Cosette shook her head. She slid off the chair to kneel on the floor, hands still interlaced with Eponine’s, and draped herself down, graceful as a swan, so her head rested in Eponine’s lap.

Eponine twined her hands in Cosette’s golden hair. It was warm in the sun, warm and soft, and Eponine sat for a long time, stroking her fingers through Cosette’s hair. Cosette had pressed her face against Eponine’s knee, so Eponine could not see her face.

The bells of Notre Dame rang the hour. Eponine moved, meaning only to lean back against the chair. But the movement woke her stomach, and it growled.

Hungry. It surprised her.

Eponine gave Cosette’s hair a gentle tug. “I’m hungry,” she said.

“We could go to a bakery,” Cosette said. She rolled over, face upward, though her eyes remained closed. “We could get brioche.”

Brioche; Gavroche’s favorite, when he could steal it. Cosette’s hair was very soft in Eponine’s clenched hands, and Cosette opened her blue eyes at the pull, half-reproachful. Eponine loosened her grip. “Brioche,” she said, and slid Cosette’s head off her lap and stood, moving across the room as if she could walk away from memories, too. “Let’s go out.”

Cosette’s Papa came too, though he lagged a few steps behind to let them talk. Could Cosette never go out alone? 

The sun shone on the streets of Paris. It seemed unreal to Eponine: the clear air, the blue sky, the warm brioche melting in her mouth.

“Where will you go?” Cosette asked, tossing a crumb to a sparrow.

“I don’t know.” Eponine had not thought about the future: hadn’t even remembered there was a future beyond just eating her brioche.

“You can stay with us, if you like,” Cosette said. She plucked off a larger shred of brioche and tossed it underhand to a pigeon.

“As what?” said Eponine. Cosette frowned. Eponine expanded, “As a drudge? In –” _revenge for the way we treated you_ , she was going to say, but Cosette looked so puzzled she did not.

“Papa has plenty of money,” Cosette said. Eponine glanced over at Cosette’s papa, reading a newspaper and watching Cosette as if someone might snatch her right off the street. “You wouldn’t need to work.”

Eponine did not want to live at the mercy of Cosette’s charity, or under Cosette’s papa’s supervision, but still less did she want to think about the future. The sun, the rattle of carts in the streets, the last bite of brioche, gone cold but still rich and delicious: this she could think about. Tomorrow was too much.

“Please, Eponine?” Cosette said, and she sounded as if she really meant it. Maybe she did: Eponine was her last link to Marius, after all.

And Eponine found that she could not hate the girl that Marius had loved. They were so similar, both so kind without much trying.

And so careless of their wealth: Cosette had scattered more crumbs of her rich brioche to the sparrows.

Eponine plucked the brioche from Cosette’s hands. “Here. I will eat that, if you won’t. Sorrow is no reason to waste bread.”


End file.
